The Delhi Electric Vehicle Policy, 2018 notes that sales of new electric cars worldwide surpassed a million units in 2017, with stocks at three million that year. More than half the sales were in China, where electric vehicles (EV) had a market share of 2.2%, while in Norway, the world’s most developed market for electric cars, this green option accounted for 39% of new car sales.

The policy also says, “Bloomberg New Energy Finance expects EVs to reach upfront cost parity with internal combustion engine vehicles by 2025, largely driven by rapid reductions in battery costs. This in turn is expected to drive global sales of electric vehicles to 11 million vehicles in 2025 and 30 million in 2030.”

The Lancet Countdown 2018 report similarly observes that despite road transport continuing to be powered almost exclusively by fossil fuels, there have been notable gains. “The use of non-fossil fuels (electricity and biofuels) has continued to outpace fossil fuel energy, rising more than 10% on a per-capita basis compared with an overall growth of 2% for fossil fuels from 2013 to 2015. This trend had a small, but notable, effect on the overall share of non-fossil fuel energy for road transport, which rose from 3.9% to 4.2% over these two years,” the Lancet report says.

Lancet put the growth of global per-capita electricity consumption for road transport as growing 13% from 2013 to 2015. In Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, per-capita electricity consumption for transport more than doubled compared with a 10% increase in non-OECD countries. “In China, the percapita electricity use was five times the global average because of the country’s high market share of electric vehicles,” the report says.

For the EV rollout in Delhi, the most crucial issue would be charging points. The state government would have to follow the example of other countries to encourage people to opt for electric vehicles. The Chinese government, for instance, plans to build 4.8 million charging points by 2022 at an investment of $1.9 billion. UK has announced a £400-million Charging Infrastructure Investment Fund to support companies in installing charging points. In the US, the California Public Utility Commission has approved $738 million and the New York Power Authority, up to $250 million, to build charging infrastructure.

Delhi has other lessons to learn too. Experts say the EV programme will prove successful if accompanied by strong legal mandate, welldesigned subsidy policy and proper implementation strategy. “California, for one, has a zero emission mandate, which makes sure that a certain percentage of vehicles have to be zero emission,” points out Anumita Roy Chowdhury, executive director, research and advocacy, Centre for Science and Environment. “The Netherlands has a good subsidy policy for EVs, while in China’s Shenzen, authorities have linked electric mobility with public transport and constituted a 16,000-strong electric bus fleet.”

She adds that Delhi’s policy is in the right direction, but needs a clear legal mandate. “They have to fix specific timelines, and monitored implementation needs to start now,” she says.

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